BY STEPHANIE NAKHLEH
Member
Los Alamos Planning & Zoning Commission*

Walk through downtown Los Alamos and observe it with fresh eyes. Notice how much of it is asphalt? About 70% of the downtown is dedicated to storing or moving cars, according to Los Alamos County’s own calculation. Next, walk through a residential neighborhood and notice how every house sits far back from the street, with large front yards mainly used for…nothing in particular. Stand downtown and observe that almost nothing is taller than three stories.

None of this happened organically. It was all determined by our Development Code.

Two kinds of guides

In last month’s column, we covered how the Comprehensive Plan and Development Code work together—one sets the vision, the other sets the rules. But the Development Code does two very different things. First, it determines what land uses are allowed where: houses versus shops, apartments versus offices. Second, it establishes detailed rules governing the siting of every building on its lot.

Today we’re talking about that second part—the development standards that shape every structure you see.

What development standards are

Development standards are specific requirements about:

●      Parking mandates: How many parking spaces every building must provide

●      Setbacks: How far buildings must sit back from property lines and streets

●      Lot coverage: What percentage of your lot you can actually build on

●      Height limits: How tall buildings can be

●      Minimum lot sizes: How large a lot must be before you can build on it

Development standards apply to every project in the county, with specific numbers varying by district. Even if apartments are theoretically allowed on a piece of land, these standards determine what kind of building actually gets constructed—or whether it makes economic sense even to try.

P. 13 of the Los Alamos County Development Code. SFR is “Single Family Residential.” Six levels of density are allowed: the large lot areas mandated by SFR-1 mean only high-cost single-family detached houses can be built in areas with that zoning designation. Another name for this type of development standard is exclusionary zoning.

A concrete example

Say you own an empty lot downtown that’s zoned for mixed-use development. You want to build a small apartment building with a coffee shop on the ground floor. The zoning district allows housing and retail in the same space, so you’re good there. But now the development standards kick in:

●      Parking mandates require you to provide a certain number of spaces per apartment, plus spaces for the coffee shop. For a 12-unit building with a ground-floor café, that could mean 20 parking spaces. Now you realize there’s a lot less buildable space on your lot than you thought.

●      Setback rules require the building to sit 15 feet back from the street: again, your buildable space has been shrunk.

●      Lot coverage maximums limit how much of your lot the building can occupy.

●      So you think: I can just build UP, right? But then you see that height limits cap how tall you can go.

Suddenly, most of your lot is parking and setbacks. The building that fits is much smaller than what the zoning technically allows. Construction costs per unit are higher because you’re building fewer homes on expensive land. The rents have to be higher to make the project work—if it works at all.\

Why this matters for housing costs

Development standards directly affect housing costs in three ways.

First, they consume land that could house people. Those parking mandates are why 30% of downtown is parking lots instead of housing or businesses. (See image below.) Our 2024 Affordable Housing Plan says we need 1,300 to 2,400 new homes by 2029, but we’re producing only 62 homes per year. Every bit of land turned into parking is a bit of land that’s not housing people.

Image source: Los Alamos County

Second, the rules increase construction costs per home. When setbacks and lot coverage limits mean you can only build small buildings on expensive land, developers need to charge more per home (whether apartment or house) to cover costs.

Third, the rules prevent housing types that are naturally more affordable than the large single-family detached home. Los Alamos has about 250 acres remaining that could be feasible for residential development. (See here for more.) Using current standards, that land could yield roughly 1,250 single-family homes, according to a County analysis. However, if the County Council were to change the rules to allow smaller lots and higher lot coverage—still following setback and height rules, just more flexible—that same 250 acres could yield 2,500 to 5,000 townhomes and small apartments. Going a step further to legalize “missing middle” multiplexes could provide 7,500 units—which, according to County estimates of housing demand, would provide enough housing for the commuters seeking a home on the hill.

Image source: Los Alamos County

The AHP states: “Los Alamos should make every possible effort to ensure that remaining land is developed in the most efficient way possible. This plan recommends encouraging ‘missing middle’ development types and target development densities starting at 10 – 15 dwelling units per acre.”

The gap between what we say and what we get

Our Comprehensive Plan says we want a downtown that provides “a variety of housing and retail options supporting urban form” and “open space, transportation, and connectivity.” Walk through downtown—the place most suited for urban form—and see what we have instead: parking lots required by the Development Code, wide gaps between buildings required by the Development Code, buildings limited by height restrictions in the (pre-2022) Development Code, and almost no housing above shops because a) that use was forbidden until recently and b) the parking math does not work.

The Comp Plan says we want one thing. The Development Code produces something different.

Progress, but still a gap

The 2022 Development Code rewrite made progress—particularly after some key edits were made in the spring of 2023. The new code has somewhat reduced parking mandates downtown and increased height limits to 86 feet in most of downtown (stepped back to 54 feet along the canyon rim). But even with these changes, we’re still producing only dozens of homes per year when we need hundreds. The standards still make many housing types impractical or economically impossible to build.

Where you come in

The Comprehensive Plan update will be paired with necessary revisions to the Development Code. The town has another chance to ask: Do our development standards help us achieve what we say we want? Do parking mandates that create large, unsightly parking lots serve a landlocked community desperate for housing? Do setbacks that force houses to sit far from the lot lines create walkable neighborhoods? Do lot requirements that allow only the most expensive housing type serve the workers our town needs?

Understanding these standards—what they require and what they produce—is the first step toward meaningful participation in that conversation.

Source: Los Alamos County’s 2021 Downtown Master Plan

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*Written in my capacity as a Planning & Zoning Commissioner, not speaking for the Commission.

Appendix: Other communities are already doing this

Los Alamos isn’t alone in rethinking development standards. Across the country, towns of all sizes are updating their codes—and seeing measurable results. The following examples are from a Sightline Institute article titled “Twice As Many Small Towns Have Eliminated Parking Mandates As Large Cities.”

Ecorse, Michigan (population 9,800) eliminated parking mandates in 2020. The town’s planner, Nani Wolf, reports that “speed of development review is so much faster” and that removing parking requirements “made it so much easier and quicker for people to reoccupy” vacant buildings.

Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia (3,540) took a different approach when it incorporated in 2007 to protect farms and forests from Atlanta sprawl. Instead of setting parking minimums, the town set parking maximums. As a result, the town protected 70% of its land in a rural state while still allowing compact, walkable neighborhoods. Households there use cars for only 2-3 trips per day, compared with 11-12 trips for a typical suburban household—despite the absence of public transit.

Seabrook, New Hampshire (population 8,400) eliminated parking mandates in 2019 after big box stores had created what town planner Tom Morgan called “too much asphalt.” The reform enabled creative reuse of existing parking: a vacant Sam’s Club with a 900-car parking lot was redeveloped, with 800 of those parking spaces converted into a regional bus terminal serving Boston and New York City.